The rose is without 'why'; it blooms simply because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, nor does it ask whether anyone sees it.

Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Sämtliche Poetische Werke, vol. I

How fleeting is this world
yet it survives.
It is ourselves that fade from it
and our ephemeral lives.

From Messenger Of The Heart: The Book Of Angelus Silesius, With Observations By Frederick Franck, p36

Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand. Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be? I must, transcending God, into the desert flee

Quoted in For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics by Roger Housden, p78

Christ could be born a thousand times in Bethlehem – but all in vain until He is born in me.

From' 'Messenger Of The Heart: The Book Of Angelus Silesius, With Observations By Frederick Franck

O Man, as long as you exist, know, have, and cherish,
You have not been delivered, believe me, of your burden.

Ah, were men's voices like the wood-birds' melody— Each happy note distinct, but all in harmony.

Allheaven's glory is within and so is hell's fierce burning. You must yourself decide in which direction you are turning.

Two eyes our souls possess: while one is turned on time, the other seeth things eternal and sublime.

The nearest way to God leads through love's open door; the path of knowledge is too slow for evermore.

I know God couldn't live a moment without me;
if I should disappear, He would die, destitute

In waste God hides the gold, accept what He may send: the great within the small, though we don't comprehend

If you know how to launch your ship into God's sea, Oh, what a blessed fate submerged in it to be

No man has known perfect felicity, until his otherness is drowned in unity

The Spirit is like new wine, see the disciples all, like men inebriate, swept away and enthralled by both its heat and strength; thus it remains true still that the disciples had of sweetest wine their fill

The Thought and Deed of Deity are of such richness and extent that It remaineth to Itself
An Undiscovered Continent

The Thought and Deed of Deity
Are of such richness and extent
That It remaineth to Itself
An Undiscovered Continent.

A Loaf holds many grains of corn
And many myriad drops the Sea:
So is God's Oneness Multitude
And that great Multitude are we.

The All proceedeth from the One,
And into One must All regress:If otherwise, the All remains
Asunder-riven manyness.

God is an utter Nothingness,
Beyond the touch of Time and Place:
The more thou graspest after Him,
The more he fleeth thy embrace.

Naught ever can be known in God: One and Alone Is He.
To know Him, Knower must be one with Known.

Ah, were men's voices like the wood-birds' melody— Each happy note distinct, but all in harmony!

All Heaven is within thee, Man,
And all of Hell within thy heart:
What thou dost choose and will to have,
That hast thou wheresoe'er thou art.

Travel within thyself!
The Stone Philosophers with wisest arts Have vainly sought,
cannot be found By travelling in foreign parts.

Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem
A thousand times his Mother bore,
Is he not born again in thee
Then art thou lost for evermore.

The Wise Man is that which he hath.
The precious Pearl of Paradise Wouldst thou not lose,
then must thou be Thyself that Pearl of greatest price.

From, "Messenger Of The Heart: The Book Of Angelus Silesius By Frederick Franck"

He has not lived in vain
who learns to be unruffled
by loss, by gain,
by, joy, by pain.

How short our span!
If you once realized how brief,
you would refrain
from causing any beast or man
the smallest grief, the slightest pain.

Christ was born a man for me,
for me he died -
Unless I become God
through Him,
His birth is mocked
His death denied

True prayer requires no word, no chant
no gesture, no sound.
It is communion, calm and still
with our own godly Ground

God far exceeds all words that we can here express
In silence He is heard, in silence worshiped best

No thought for the hereafter have the wise,
for on this very earth they live in paradise

All heaven's glory is within and so is hell's fierce burning.
You must yourself decide in which direction you are turning

Unless you find paradise at your own center,
there is not the smallest chance
That you may enter

Saints do not die. It is their lot,
To die while on this earth to all that God is not.

The vengeful God of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale. It simply is the Me
That makes me fail.

No ray of Light can shine
if severed from its source.
Without my inner Light
I lose my course.

Translation by Maria Shardy, Classics of Western Spirituality

So high above all things that be.
Is God uplifted, man can dare.
No utterance: he prayeth best.
When Silence is his sum of prayer

Even before I was me, I was God in God;
And I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself

Time is eternity and eternity is time, just as long as you yourself don't make them different

I know God couldn't live a moment without me; if I should disappear, He would die, destitute

In waste God hides the gold, accept what He may send,
The great within the small, though we don't comprehend.

No man has known perfect felicity,
Until his otherness is drowned in unity

Love is alike to death, annihilates the senses,
My heart it breaks as well, the spirit's drawn from hence

The Spirit is like new wine, see the disciples all,
Like men inebriate, swept away and enthralled
By both its heat and strength; thus it remains true still
That the disciples had of sweetest wine their fill

If you know how to launch your ship into God's sea
Oh, what a blessed fate, submerged in it to be

Here I still flow in God as a small stream of time,
There I shall be a sea of blessedness sublime

Thou laughest that a child cries o'er its broken doll;—
The things o'er which thou mournest—are they not playthings all?

Three days: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday, I know,
Yet if the past were cancelled within the here and now
And then the future hidden, I could regain that Day
Which I, before I was, had lived in God's own way.

Never in endless time will ring a sound as sweetly
As when a human heart in God is tuned completely.

God, being a great abyss, to men his depth reveals
Who climb the highest peak of the eternal hills

In schools throughout the world God's but described to you.
Within the spirit's school one sees and loves him too.

A spark without its fire, a drop without its sea,
Without rebirth what more, pray, wouldst thou be?

God is a flowing well which constantly may pour
Into his whole Creation, and yet be as before.

Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius describe their spiritual vision of the sublime and ultimate reality of God, as well as their participation therein, by a dramatic use of the power of imagery of the German language which, although rooted in time and space, seems to be free from the constraints of these elements. Time and space alone are incapable of grasping eternity; only when struck by a shaft of eternal light can they reflect its splendor. Such a reflection of the eternal is present in the language of Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius. It is, more-over, the light of eternity that makes it at all possible to see the teachings of these great metaphysicians and mystics as a unity, in spite of their having lived at different times and belonged to differing Christian confessions. The uniformity of their spiritual vision arises from the inner unity of Divine Reality itself. Human language becomes inadequate when confronted with this mystery of the inner unity of the Godhead; “the most beautiful statement about God of which man is capable is his silence in the face of his inner riches.”...Angelus Silesius summarized his spiritual vision in rhymes whose beauty is filled with an inner certainty that derives directly from the knowledge of the divine being. This direct knowledge of God is founded on the identity of essence between God and the soul, which occurs when the soul once more corresponds to its original state of being created in the image of God.

Although the influence of Boehme was to be felt far and wide, ranging from French and German theosophers and esoterists to Russian contemplatives, perhaps the most artistically powerful expression of purely sapiential teachings deeply influenced by him are to be found in the hymns of Christian gnosis which comprise the Cherubic Wanderer of Angelus Silesius (1624-1677) which are also among the most remarkable works of German literature. This collection, so close in both form and content to Sufi poetry, is based upon the central theme of return to God...it is the al-ma'rifah of Islam or the jnana of Hinduism and very much in accord with works of such nature whether they be in Arabic and Persian or Sanskrit.

Many years ago in lovely Lindau on the Bodensee, I happened upon a thin volume of Angelus Silesius' couplets which startled, amused and greatly interested me. Although it was in 1657 the world had first received them it seemed to me that they had lost little of their significance in 300 years. Their pithy comments upon human frailty, their wholesome attempt to direct a way toward peace of mind, their often half concealed humor, have modern application.

To comment upon the residue of truth or wisdom enshrined in the utterances of Angelus Silesius does not lie within my scope. For mystics the heart is always the supreme court of appeal and within their community, though so widely extended in space and time, there has always been a remarkable unanimity in its findings...They are those who can say with Angelus Silesius: Turn whereso'er I will, I find no evidence Of End, Beginning, Centre or Circumference. There are perhaps few to-day who will find the language of Angelus Silesius adequate in every respect to the expression of their deepest intuitions. He spoke in the dialect of a venerable creed, but the experience of which he spoke is immemorial. And it appears to be unchanging. Those who are in possession of the code will readily decipher the message

One of the most prominent and interesting mystics of Germany, Johannes Scheffler, or as he is better known by his adopted name, Angelus Silesius...was born of Protestant parents at Breslau, the capital of Silesia, in 1624...Scheffler's mystic inclinations had long before alienated him from the dogmatic and anti-artistic spirit of the religion of his birth which during the middle of the seventeenth century was more severe and bigoted than ever before or afterwards. At the same time there was a religious revival in the Roman Catholic world which proved attractive to him, and so it was but natural that finally in 1653 he severed his old affiliations, and joined the Church that by the mystical glamor of its historical traditions was most sympathetic to him

Paul Carus, in ANGELUS SILESIUS, THE OPEN COURT (1908)

I will end with a great line by the poet who, in the seventeenth century, took the strangely real and poetic name of Angelus Silesius. It is the summary of all I have said tonight — except that I have said it by means of reasoning and simulated reasoning. I will say it first in Spanish and then in German: La rosa es sin porqué; florece porque florece. Die Rose ist ohne warum; sie blühet weil sie blühet